Onward
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [Decode] Live like the earth! Live! A miracle may come when you do. (mirei) pre-canon. Prequel to Abstracts.


_Warning for harmful to minors_

* * *

She can't ever recall her exact moment of birth. As far as she can tell, she has never have one. She could never put her existence to words either because there was no exact moment. Her first memories were of the sea, and then they were of the earth. The earth and running from the creatures that pounded upon it.

At first she had crawled away, her tiny hands and feet unsuited to carrying her. She had buried herself in the crooks of trees, hiding in the cover of waterfalls. She didn't know what they were called, termed them the sea guardians that reminded her of the reincarnating world she had been created in. The sea would protect her, she had thought. Water would save her, if no one else would. She was safest when it rained.

She was also cold, so cold.

The monsters, they had covers. _(Fur,_ her mind had whispered, pelts that covered more than their flimsy heads,) and they would not bake in the sun nor melt in the rain. She would have to hide.

She couldn't recall anything, not even a name.

The names of things pop into her head, words whispered from the water and buried in the desert sand. She remembers them, hides in them, drinks in their wisdom.

It's how she survives the early years.

By the time she understands anything, she is still so tiny. Her hands are scarred and her the soles of her feet are rough. She is so tiny. How does she live?

Simple. She runs.

She has probably seen the same earth a thousand, thousand times by the time she can't run any further. She's reduced to crawling, pushing her arms forward. She bleeds and bleeds.

She cries until her tear ducts don't respond.

Naturally, she doesn't remember any of this with any sort of clarity, no matter who asks. All she can remember is that she has always been alone.

* * *

She's still running. Her feet have stopped hurting by now. It's everything else that hurts. The pangs of hunger, the dryness in her mouth, they're familiar sensations she wants to disappear. She doesn't know where to start.

She doesn't even have a name.

The other creatures have them, or things like them. They call each other by names across the settlements. She has words that reference her. Words, feelings. She has them. She has them all.

She feels nothing. Nothing but fear.

When no one comes, she mouths the words to herself. She begins to identify, slowly. Her nose scents what's edible. Her ears, her fingers, they become aware. The world opens the more her eyes close.

Her body toughens. She is able to move forward for hours. Sometimes it's far enough, sometimes it isn't.

Now, as she runs through the night, towards the faint glow of something she can't make out, she's not far enough.

There's a raucous laughter a few meters behind her. She jumps to the right.

She's learned the word 'help' recently. She'd like to use it, but she knows by now. No one will come. No one but them. They will not help her, like they do their friends.

They catch up this time. She trembles. There is a way out; she knows it. She just has to find it, just has to get there.

An arm rises, snatches her from the ground. She's thrown. A great beast of a tail waits below. She bites her tongue not to scream, and almost bites through it at the single snap of the appendage swinging into her torso. It sends her soaring. It should have killed her.

It doesn't.

The fall almost does though. She coughs something red and sticky that she's never heard the word for but she's always seen it. Sometimes it's on her toes, or running over her hands and elbows, never out of her mouth before. Whatever it is, it's in her body for a reason.

And now it's out and this time it's _everywhere_.

"Help," she whispers. Her first word, a plea. "Help... me..."

The creature moves towards her. Her small fists clench in pain. She has to be ready to run, but she can't. It hurts. It hurts so much. She can't even breathe.

"Help..."

The heat of flames grows, smoke wafting, crackling the air. She makes to move but her body is pulled into the air and lit up with the echo light of the moon. The fire creaks and soars towards her.

She screams and then there is nothing, nothing but a tingling sensation in her skin. She opens her eyes when her feet touch the ground. They itch.

All around her, the data disintegrates, spiraling, fading into the sky. The monsters lay there in varying states of horror and decay.

She vomits.

What has she done?

 _Monster,_ whispers a dying one. _Knew it didn't smell right._

It. it.

She is a monster. She is an it.

She runs.

* * *

A long time later, she wakes on something soft. It's not the ground, it's too gentle, too put together, like the straw on the floor of a decrepit building. That night had been lucky. She wakes to purple eyes, cool and close. She wants to pull back but her limbs hurt. She makes a desperate whine of a sound. It's supposed to be a word. She doesn't know very many, at least, not enough to speak them in the coherent way she hears in the back corners and tiny places.

The purple eyes pull back, and she can make out the outline of a cat face. It's still staring. It hasn't attacked though. Why not?

"BlackTailmon, it's rude to stare," says a voice. It creaks like old branches before they break. The cat scoffs.

"Thing's staring right back," she said with a loose swish of her tail.

A chortle. "That is not a _thing_ , young one. That is a girl, a human girl to be specific. Be polite."

"Why?" Her voice is unhappy. Unhappiness is dangerous, and her body tenses before she can stop it.

She makes another croak of a noise. They turn to her. She frowns. There's no hostility there. There's only interest in the cat and the old man, hunched with a cane, she sees nothing. There's too much hair, a mass of white.

"Hello there," the man says, setting his staff on his chair. "You gave us quite a fright when you washed up on the beach. Do you have a name?"

She blinks. Name? Thing to call herself? Well, she has the latter, not the former. She can give them that. Everyone calls her that.

"It," she says. Then she coughs. She's thirsty. "It," she repeats, hoping it conveys more, hoping it says how thirsty and tired she is.

The two stare. Perhaps she said something wrong.

Then the man smiles (she can see the blurry beard lift up) and gently shake his head. "No, that is not a name," he says. He seems so stuck on this _name_ thing. She had always wanted one, but it doesn't seem important now. "We'll come up with a better one."

At the moment. She doesn't care. She scratches her throat.

"Let's keep her alive so she can have a name, old man." The cat sounds more amused than angry, which means less likely to hit something, as far as she's aware.

The girl hopes it's true.

* * *

As it turns out, having a name makes things a lot easier. It tells her the difference between friend and foe.

"Mirei, are you up?"

Mirei nods, readjusting the glasses slipping off of her nose. The feeling is unusual, but not as daunting as it would have been before. Still, she had never had something to help her actually see until now, so it's nice, she supposes. BlackTailmon's lips twitch.

"Come on," she says. "We need to get out of the city. The Falling is about to start."

Mirei nods again and pushes herself to her feet, easier to do with food in her stomach. The Falling... a time that was as sacred as the Hatching. The birth of new life and the rest of old death, the holiday that took place in File for all the baby Digimon. All of the children who could not evolve... their life was up today, to give new ones a chance. She traces the hem of her dress (she had learned so many words in the half-year she had been here) and rises to follow the black cat. Digimon lives are immortal yet finite, according to Jijimon, including his own. Yet, he always remains the oldest, he says, because someone has to do it.

The only one that seems different, according to him, is the little black cat herself. And Mirei, apparently. Then again, she herself isn't a Digimon.

Mirei doesn't ask why the cat is different; that seems like a question worthy of an attack or worse. So she trails after to the Railroad Plains. Her bare feet (she can't get accustomed to shoes, no matter how hard she tries. They must be an acquired feeling*.) kick up the dirt but that's all. It doesn't even make noise. The Digimon are all starting to slow. The bouncing is less immediate, there are more boarded up windows. Only the older Digimon move along, and there aren't many. Most are already gone, dead or somewhere else.

Only those who evolve are able to live. It seems cruel. She hasn't evolved at all.

"Come _on_ , Mirei."

Mirei sighs on the inside. BlackTailmon insists on using her name. The word 'it' is like fleas, she says. Mirei has no idea what fleas are, but she supposes they are like the itch on her skin when she didn't dive into the river fast enough.

They reach the edge of the city to find Jijimon. He is drawing casually into the ground, but at the sound of BlackTailmon's hiss, he looks at them.

"Come," he says, a smile in his voice. "Come and look."

She obeys and watches him work for hours without rest. As the sun sets, a gentle pink glow wraps around the tips of the buildings. Jijimon raises his staff. Below the hill, the older Digimon settle in the grass. Then at the sight of the first star, the pink turns blue and the lights below go out.

A steady hum lifts from the ground. The air sings, steady, slow. Like the river, like the sand. This is molded, necessary, This is the river's melody brought to the earth.

Before she can stop herself, Mirei begins to sing with it.

The song tumbles and, like a time she remembers only vacantly - _hotitchpainburndeath_ -, the sound echoes beneath her skin. This time, however, it leaves her with ease, like steam from a bath. Her glasses fall harmlessly to the ground and she ignores them. Her body moves forward, lifted by the sound and she doesn't know where she's going or what she's doing. She simply lets go.

The world fills her mind and it is infinite.

When Mirei manages to pull back into herself, all is silent and there is an egg in her arms. Used to the tickle of the grass, she simply curls up and falls asleep.

* * *

BlackTailmon doesn't like the baby.

When she says this, Jijimon laughs and says the cat doesn't like her things being stolen. Mirei doesn't understand this, not at all. BlackTailmon won't give her a straight answer either, just tell her to go play with the baby.

Even so, the two of them near her, each warm, each pleasant, is like the satisfactory click of a screen turning on. They guard her while she dances through the plains. They strengthen her limbs, steady her songs. They are the first right thing she has ever had.

Jijimon is only secondary due to his absence, due to his busy life running a whole city. She doesn't mind this. He is a wonderful teacher.

If only these days could last.

Mirei knows better than to expect them to.

* * *

"Focus."

His voice is still a rasp, gentle but chilled. He is desperate for her to get this, desperate for her to understand. If she cannot fight without freezing up, she will be hurt. She will die.

Mirei knows now that if she dies, it will hurt him. It will hurt her cats and the place she now calls her garden because she can let the seeds sprout as she will. In order to protect those seeds, she needs to learn. So she shuts her eyes and clenches her fists. The wind murmurs and the staff makes a sound like a hiss as it swings towards her. She dodges and ducks. She's still small enough that she's easy to hit, but lithe enough for movement to be easy.

It's still impossible to avoid it all. But she is glad her teacher cares.

If only she knew how to smile, to thank him properly.

Regardless, he seems to understand.

"You must live, child," he says to her with a wistfulness to his voice. "Miracles do not come to the dead."

She nods and they practice again.

* * *

She eventually leaves. The baby is a Plotmon, nudging at her ankles, eager to see the world. BlackTailmon yawns at nothing every morning. She knows better however. Most of this is her need to move. She's never spent years anywhere. She is surprised it took her as long as this to wander now.

She knows by the time she returns, her dear teacher will have died, been reborn. The cycle will have started anew. He'll have forgotten her. Her first home will have her as nothing more than a myth, if she's lucky.

Mirei pretends it doesn't hurt.

So they go in the night when only the wildest Digimon fight, when the smart avoid. She tries not to look back.

She is happy she cannot cry anymore.

* * *

The years pass. Plotmon evolves. Neither die. But then, neither does she. That may be why. Another sign she's different. Mirei's beginning to get tired of them.

Then, as the times seems endless, the world trembles.

She's in the mountains at the time, having found a dry place to sit and rest. Her cats are itching to move, to evolve and shatter this mountain, give them space. Sadly, it will crush her if they try. So they've settled between pacing and resting in her lap. She can't blame them. She wants out, but this blizzard is awful.

When the world shakes, the pain races up her skin. She chokes. She is used to pain, she is good with it. It has almost killed her; it won't kill her now-

She coughs, the sensation made of split, blood, and air. Her body twists with the pain. She shudders, makes herself stand and walk to the entrance of the cave. The two of them are by her feet to look as well. Far in the distance, almost too difficult to see, the clouds are split into pieces, surrounding a great spire.

Mirei rubs her eyes, then looks again. It's still there.

"The coliseum was smaller before." It's not a question, and her cats shake their heads anyway. She pulls herself back into the cave, shivering with jerky limbs. The fire, though warm, is now a small comfort

"You saw, barely the height of the training gym." BlackTailmon's ears fall back and she glares outside.

"Is it supposed to be that big now?" Tailmon curls into her arms. Mirei pats her head in gentle reflex. Her little one is scared.

"When the storm fades, we'll look and see."

* * *

Mirei doesn't really know what to expect when she reaches the borders of File. The city has grown since her absence. She is able to hear it from the forest. The baby babbling is almost unbearable. She's used to the whisper-quiet of the world, the avoidance of the other Digimon. It's better than them trying to kill her. Not that they can anymore, at least not as easily. Still, the thought is a comfort.

She tells her partners to hide themselves. She doesn't know how the city will take seeing an angel and a demon float beside her. At least they no longer complain about caves being too small. She can make them their own now, a miracle in and of itself.

She goes ignored for the most part, until a Dodomon hops by her foot. "Ello," it chirps. Mirei kneels to pick it up before she can think about it and it nuzzles at her cheek. "Been a while, long long while."

Mirei blinks. "You... you remember?"

"Mmhm!" The Dodomon chitters oddly and she continues to walk with it. "You smell funny like I do, so you're hard to forget. And you played with us a lot, so you're definitely familiar."

Her face flames up, but she puts it to the side. She has to see Jijimon, if he's here, see what he's heard. She pauses, blood running cold.

 _Will he remember me?_

Her train of thought had never gone that far. It had gone everywhere but that far. She doesn't know what she's going to do if he's forgotten.

 _It's simple, isn't it? Just remind him._

With what? How? She doesn't know if she's changed or not since then, doesn't know anything. All she knows is that seeing that tower made her ill, like she should know what it is, but didn't. Like she was supposed to be there but didn't know how.

But he is first. Teacher is always first, now that her friends, her children, are her own.

So she goes.

The house is mostly unchanged. It's controlled chaos at its finest. The human toys line the walls and the furniture is only slightly more threadbare. He turns at the sound, creaking bones loud in her ears. She cannot see his eyes. In fact, has his hair gotten longer?

"Why hello, lass," he says with a chuckle. "You've gotten quite tall in your absence. How rude."

Mirei shifts, accommodating the Dodomon at her arm. "You... you remember?"

"How could I not?"

Mirei regrets forgetting how to cry now. "I..." Her fears seem foolish, come to think of it

"Don't worry, lass." He goes to his desk and hands her something in a lavender case. "We will work to understand this. All of us."

She wants to believe him.

* * *

Vitium.

The name makes her skin tingle, her heart ache. The memorials have all gone quiet. She hunts them all down, finding them dead, unresponsive even to her song. She reaches into the human world data, at a loss. The digital world's memories are tampered with by the creature's existence, so they are unreliable at best.

Even with two partners, two dear friends, she cannot do this on her own. She knows better than to try.

So she searches. She sings to the data she finds in the sea, she calls to the voices which begin to thrum in the back of her mind.

What Mirei finds... are children. Well, they are not children, but to Jijimon, they are barely hatchlings, especially compared to her. They are young and according to their battles, fairly powerful. She brings up the program in another window. Perhaps it is a long shot, but...

Her body flickers.

She wants to make a miracle happen.

Digimon are already running, fleeing to the outskirts. Strange clouds begin to blanket people's eyes. The little ones only don't shy from her because of her smell.

There isn't time to choose anyone else.

Mirei lets out a breath of air, and clicks 'send'.

She knows very little about actual humans. She just hopes these will answer. She hopes her heart has not led her astray.

"All will be well," Jijimon says from behind her.

Mirei smiles faintly, nodding at her teacher.

He is likely correct. All will be well.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** Why is it I could easily put out the near 6k fic but not the 3k one? I think my brain was just laughing at me. Ah well, what can you do? Anyway, please read, review, all that happy nonsense while I go bury myself in betas. Have a good one!

acquired feeling* - She meant taste, but the phrasing would make no sense to her.

Challenges: Jigsaw Puzzle number 29, Diversity Writing (Digimon): F55. Write a pre-canon fic and Gameverse Boot Camp: prompt 38 "owe"


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